


Under Lock and Stone

by cloverfield



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brief Instances of OCs, Dungeons, Execution, Gore, Grim and Dark and Dirty, Imprisonment, KuroFai Olympics, KuroFai Olympics 2016, M/M, Minor Character Death, Slight Magic Use, Team Dark, The Author Did Not Expect This To Be This Dark, The Author Regrets Everything, Violence, ambiguous ending, do not expect a happy ending, prisoners of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverfield/pseuds/cloverfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Light v.s. Dark Olympic fic for the prompt 'the Eleventh Hour'. A soldier is captured as a prisoner of war – and finds an ally in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Lock and Stone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains strong violence, adult language, minor character death and dark themes. This fic may be triggering due to scenes that contain: _claustrophobic implications_ , _references to war_ , _imprisonment_ , _prisoners of war_ , _execution_ , _situational despair_ , and _graphic injury_. Please do not read this fic if you believe you may be triggered by any of the above.

Stone scraped rough and cold against the palm of Kurogane’s hand as he crashed into the dark. A hot jolt of pain seared up his wrist and into his elbow where he caught himself with one arm and turned the vicious shove into a clumsy, skidding roll. It wasn’t the best attempt at righting himself, but with his ears still ringing from the heavy-handed blow the head guard had smashed across the back of his head it was better than landing face first in a bloody heap. He was still bleeding, though, if the warm wetness clinging sticky to the stinging grit scraped across his palm was anything to go by.

“You make no trouble,” growled the guard that had hit him, the vowels rolling thick and coarse; his grasp of Kurogane’s tongue was poor at best, but the menace in the words a clear threat. “You stay. One day, ransom.” Against the brightness of the torches, blazing in the hands of the laughing soldiers behind him and pouring light into the stone walls surrounding them, his face was a shadow. “Until then, you wait.”

Bracing his hand against the wall with a bloody smear, Kurogane surged onto his knees. “For how long?” The words burst out before he could stop them, his own voice ringing sharp against stone and the crackle and splutter of torches.

“You _wait_.” Metal whined as rusty hinges scraped against stone and the cell door screeched closed to slam Kurogane into darkness, the sound of each lock and bolt ratcheting into place like blow after blow landing in the hollowness of his chest. The click of boot heels on stone echoed out in time with their laughter as the guards departed, leaving him alone with the throb of his palm as those footsteps faded. Carefully, slowly, Kurogane rocked back to rest on his heels with a dragging hiss of breath.

His grasp of Ceresian wasn’t the best (and he’d been smart enough to keep his mouth shut when he’d been captured) but Kurogane had learned enough in the years since the war began to know what his captors had been cackling about: everyone knew the Crown of Ceres had never once sued for ransom, no matter how many captives they took at the front lines. The only hope for a soldier like him – an officer with a command, maybe, but not high enough in rank to be anything near important – was to keep his head down and his mouth shut and pray the warlords back home got their shit together to put an end to the fighting once and for all.

“Fuck,” said Kurogane softly, but with feeling. There were worse things than being a prisoner in hostile territory – he wasn’t _dead_ , for a start, and the gods alone knew death was the least of his problems if the Ceresians decided he knew information worth torturing out of him. The lawful conventions that governed the game of war were one thing for nobles and kings and another entirely for the rank and file. Being thrown into the dungeons, no matter how roughly, was almost a blessing compared to what the guards could do if saw fit to get creative. Still. Sitting in his arse in a pitch-black cell wasn’t going to do much for his chances of getting out of it, and getting back to the frontlines where he belonged; he’d left good men and women behind when he’d been taken in the chaos of a night-attack, and – as their captain – he had a responsibility to all those under his command.

_If they’re even still alive – no. Don’t think about it._

Kurogane stood slowly. The ache of his wrist and the wet-grit burn of his palm would have to be enough to push back his morbid thoughts and keep him grounded in the present. He’d trained his soldiers well, done all he could to give them the skills to live through the heat of any battle, no matter how fierce; Kurogane had no choice but to trust his company would survive without him. Keeping himself alive in a dank dungeon below the grounds of a manned and fortified Ceresian stronghold would be enough trouble without borrowing more from those he’d left behind.

Straightening his spine, Kurogane brushed his fingertips over his bloodied palm, picking out what gravel he could and scraping away the dirt until it bled freely. Taking the sleeve of his undershirt between his teeth, he tore a thin strip free to bind it tight, even as he shivered against the chill. They’d taken his armour, his sword, everything he had on him and even his _boots_ – left him with only the clothes on his back. Chances were he wouldn’t get a chance to bathe any time soon, and he’d need to keep his hand wrapped and as clean as he could in the meantime. In the mouldering depths of a dungeon any wound, no matter how small, could mean infection and death if not looked after.

“I’m getting out of here alive,” muttered Kurogane, taking a careful step forward in the darkness; and then another and another when he gained his feet, right up until he reached the solid iron door and pressed his fingers hard against the icy metal. The only light Kurogane had to see by was the faintest line of brightness bleeding between the edge of the doorframe and the stone of the walls around him – not nearly enough to illuminate the depths of cold stone. Better to turn his back and trust his other senses, mapping his cell by touch and sound than weak and useless eyesight alone.

The edge of the door was coarse but not sharp, rough pits beneath his fingertips that suggested rust – though not nearly enough to weaken the metal. The hinges were large and sturdy, heavily bolted and bound tightly to the frame; any hopes of loosening them and prising the door free were dashed without a thought. Rapping his knuckles against the flat of it gave Kurogane a dull _thunk_ rather than a hollow tone – solid metal through and through then, and not likely to buckle or warp no matter how hard he kicked the damn thing. “Not that kicking it down barefooted would be a clever idea,” Kurogane murmured, and the flatness of the words even in his own voice was demoralising enough without wondering where the hell his boots had gotten to.

A soldier born and bred, Kurogane had lived in barracks and tent-cities and parade grounds full of the breathing, laughing and completely unrepentant noise of hundreds of other people, if not thousands, his whole life; he’d never had a moment’s peace but for the quiet hours before dawn or the solemnity of vigil over the wounded or deceased. A quiet cell, thick with the creaking silence of isolation and the echo of his own breath, was enough to make his skin crawl.

Gritting his teeth, Kurogane crouched down, running his hands flat across the plane of metal, feeling for weakness in any rivets or seams. He wasn’t expecting to find any, considering that if there was one thing Ceres had a monopoly on it was the iron trade, and he was proven right – even if the door _wasn’t_ a single slab of iron as thick as his arm, its heavy sheets were welded so securely it might as well be. He did, however, find what felt like the indent of a hatch: a squarish, hollow gap he could put his fingers into, cut into the door barely an inch above the stone lintel, with what Kurogane had to presume was a sliding panel of some kind. Accessible only from the outside of the cell, of course, and though it seemed wide enough to fit his hand in with plenty of space besides, he’d never be able to crawl through it.

“A hatch in the door – probably for food, which means they’re even less likely to unlock and open it anytime soon.” Kurogane scowled. So much for any half-thought plans of ambushing a guard and mugging him for his keys and weapon.

Dragging his fingers up the door as he stood in a half-hearted hope of proving himself wrong, Kurogane huffed out a heavy breath and placed his hands flat on the chill stone surrounding him. _Move beyond the obvious. If not the door itself, try the walls around it_. The rock walls were hard and coarse with no signs of crumbling, each stone brick properly hewn and laid with the skill of a mason – the fortress above him had stood for centuries and no doubt the dungeons below it were just as ageless. Even the grout was in good repair, resisting the chipping of his fingertips or any attempts at wiggling his fingers into gaps. All Kurogane managed to achieve with a good few minutes of effort were scraped knuckles and fingernails full of grit.

Still. The older the fortress, the more likely it had _something_ wrong with it – stone walls didn’t and couldn’t survive the turn of the centuries completely unscathed, no matter how well they had been built. Somewhere in this cell, there would be a loose brick or a crack, a weakness Kurogane could exploit; some flaw, no matter how small, that would provide the key to his escape.

_Keep your wits about you. Keep yourself calm. You’re not going to rot in here._

Chafing his arms, Kurogane stamped his feet once, twice, to chase the pins and needles out of his blood. If he was this cold after only being in the cell for a few hours – insofar as he could tell how much time had passed without seeing the movement of the sun, anyway – he had to keep moving to keep warm.  “Mapping the length of the cell is as good a place as any to start.” The better he knew his way around, the easier it would be to get his bearing; being in the darkness below ground wasn’t so different from night-marching through a forest anyway. “Except for the moonlight, the stars, the natural landmarks, the ability to see more than an inch in front of me…”

Kurogane had never really been one to talk to himself before, but if the sound of his own voice was the only thing he had to block out the ringing silence of the walls around him, it would have to do.

One hand pressed against the stone, Kurogane stepped gingerly into the gloom. Having his eyes open or closed made no difference, and beneath bare feet the stone floor was cold and gritty. “Three paces from the door to the east wall,” he muttered, frowning when his toes bumped against something wooden that rocked beneath his next step. “…and a bucket?” Kurogane grimaced. For waste, probably, and hopefully they’d empty the damn thing. “At least they gave me a bucket in the first place.”

When his fingertips found the corner of the cell, Kurogane ran his hand over the stonework carefully. Corners could be weak points if not laid properly, and if this cell shared a common wall with the neighbouring cell, it might have a defect in the join that could be forced into a crack – but as he scraped his fingers down against the rough edges of stone, Kurogane found nothing. Even the heavy stone slabs laid across the cell floor had been mortared in place, resisting all attempts at prying them loose, and by the time Kurogane stood up and dusted the grit from his hands off against his trews, his fingertips were raw and aching with blood caked beneath his fingernails.

“Well, _that_ didn’t work.” Still. He had three more walls to check over and all the time in the world to make it thorough. Sooner or later, he would find something, surely, even if he had to crawl on hands and knees over every inch of this gods-damned cell.

Another seven paces took him to the far wall of his cell where Kurogane found the second corner just as sturdy as the first. He also almost fell onto the low pallet jutting out of the third wall, barking his shin on the edge of the surprisingly sturdy wood he ran into halfway along. Biting back a curse, Kurogane sank down onto the pallet gratefully. “It’s better than sleeping on the floor,” he muttered, running his hand over his shin and rubbing the stinging warmth of a rising bruise. The pallet wasn’t quite long enough to fit his whole frame on, but it was bracketed securely to the stone. It felt like it could bear his weight at least. Sleeping on the pallet would be better than the cold floor, even if it was just bare wooden planks bolted to a frame; splinters or not, keeping off the stone would keep him warmer and give Kurogane a better chance of staving off a sickening chill.

When Kurogane stood once more he found another two paces before he again met the wall. _This cell is bigger than I thought._ It wasn’t the smallest room he’d ever been confined to – his room in the barracks back at the capital had been smaller for a start – even if it wasn’t exactly spacious, and there was room to walk and stretch his limbs besides. If he wanted to keep himself in good shape for any opportunity for escape that might arise, keeping moving would be the most important thing he could do.

Running his hands down the fourth wall proved the next corner to be just as well-constructed as the first few, but the stone beneath his fingertips felt smoother, almost slick; the dampness of moss caught on the roughness of his torn fingernails, cool and a little soothing against sore skin. Growing moss was a sign of moisture in the air, and that it was concentrated on this one wall meant on the other side of it there was _water_. Water over stone meant erosion and weakness, and while it wasn’t exactly the missing brick or fissured stone Kurogane had been hoping for, it was a start.

Everything he remembered of the campaign maps he’d studied had shown underground rivers threaded all through the mountains and valleys of Ceres, and its cities and towns clustered around their courses; it wasn’t much of a stretch to think that maybe this fortress had been built on top of one. It even made sense, if you thought about it – a steady supply of water was a must for any military base. And wet stone here meant it was very close by.

Tapping against the wall with his knuckles, Kurogane listened for any change in tone. He was no mason, to know the heart of stone through its sound alone; he could not tell you which rock held veins of ore or gems, or which was rotten or hollow at its core. But the difference in sound between one brick and another was enough to tell him where weakness might be, where water might have done its work over years or decades to wear down the wall between this cell and its neighbour. And in the quiet space between each tap, Kurogane could just hear the faintest, softest drip of water – not from his ceiling, a full arms-span above his head, but from the ceiling of the cell next door.

“Water,” he murmured, running his palms over stone worn ever so slightly smoother than the coarseness of the other three walls; his bandaged palm caught with a clothy rasp as he dragged it over the dips and valleys of this last wall. If nothing else, it meant less of a chance he would die of thirst alone if his captors left him to starve. Moss, too, could be used as a wound dressing if needed, and eaten if he were desperate enough. “If I could just find where it was dripping from, I’d at least know–”

Kurogane stilled, hands shaking just a little, and not only from the chill. _There_ , beneath his fingertips:  the chipped edge of stone, splintering loose and wobbling beneath the pressure of his touch. Hope twisted in his gut like a rope, tangled and heavy, a weight that dragged his breath from his chest as Kurogane carefully prised a sliver free from the rock that birthed it – and then another, and another, tiny fragments that cracked and caved beneath his fingers and crumbled to his feet in a dust of chilled and damp grit.

How long he worked at the crack he could not have guessed, half-way up the wall and close enough to his chest that he did not have to stoop, but when Kurogane felt the faintest stirring of air against his palm – cold and damp and definitely from the cell next to his own – he couldn’t stop the grin that tugged at the corner of his mouth, a triumphant grin that just as quickly turned to shock in the next breath.

“ _Hello?_ ” said a voice, thin and cracked with a whisper of long disuse, faint from distance and the wall between them but ringing clear in the silence between Kurogane’s panicked heartbeats all the same. “Hello – I can hear you. Do you speak Ceresian? _Et mahl Vahlria?_ ” A deep breath, the echo of which Kurogane felt rasping from his own chest, as the voice spoke once more in the strangely-accented but perfectly intelligible tones of Kurogane’s mother tongue: “Do you speak Nihongo?”

“Nihongo,” Kurogane blurted, before he could think better. His palm smacked against the wall, his whole arm shaking and the pain of his wound pressing against the roughness of stone completely forgotten. “I speak – I am – who _are_ you?” The plaintive note he couldn’t help, or the stuttering, but none of it mattered if this voice would just keep _talking_.

“A friend,” and Kurogane’s words weren’t the only ones to sound desperate. “Please. A friend. Keep talking.” The voice – the _man,_ he would guess, for the husky depth to its tone – curled around the shapes and sounds of Kurogane’s own tongue in way that seemed almost gentle. “I have not – I have not heard another soul in so long. Please.”

“Who are you?” said Kurogane again, for he could think of nothing else – he’d seen closed cell doors and heard the muffled sounds of the other poor bastards trapped below ground as his captors had dragged him down into the dungeon’s heart, but not one voice, not one wailing or sobbing or muttering word had been familiar to him. “Are you – a soldier?” Nihon was not the only country Ceres had gone to war with, not even the most recent. “A hostage?”

Of all the responses Kurogane could have expected, laughter was not one – and the chill of it rolled down his spine like ice.

“No,” sighed the man, that mirthless chuckle still in his voice, and never had any one sound been so _sad_. “Not a soldier. I am – or I should say, I _was_ , a priest. A healer, from a temple in the valley below the fortress.” A pause, heavy with darkness and the drum of Kurogane’s own heartbeat pounding in his ears. “And now I would say – I am your _ally_.”

“My ally,” and if his own voice was hushed, it was in disbelief and hope so sharp it edged on painful. “You don’t even know who I am, priest.” But even as he said it, Kurogane knew it did not matter – did not even care who or what this voice in the dark belonged to. If this man were in the cell beside his own at the hands of the Ceresian Royal Army, then he was an enemy of theirs above all else.

“I don’t need to know you to know you are not the one who imprisoned me, and that is enough.” Another sigh, and without thought both of Kurogane’s hands came to rest aside of the crack in the wall between them, as though to press through stone. “And I am no priest – not anymore.”

* * *

The creaking din of distant gates opening woke Kurogane in a thunderclap crash of groaning metal, and he rolled off his pallet before its echoes had left his ears. His feet found the floor in the same moment as he heard footsteps, and he was up and moving for the door before he had even opened his eyes – not that it mattered much when the room was just as pitch black as it had been the day before, and the four days before that. Sight meant nothing underground, and in the time he had spent in this damp and forsaken hole, Kurogane had already learnt to let his other senses rise where one had weakened.

The metal cart that the guards brought food for the prisoners on rattled as it drew closer, one wheel squeaking with a loose bolt as it clattered over the bumpy floors, and in the same ritual he performed every day, Kurogane found himself counting the number of stops it made as it approached his door. _Three stops, and then more rattling._ The stone of the wall beside the door was cold through the thin cloth of his undershirt. _Two stops. More rattling._ Five cells full so far, of the long and winding stretch the guards had lead him down – which meant either some cells were empty, or some prisoners were not being fed. _Rattling, rattling._ The sounds of the cart approaching grew louder, and now he could hear both the guards talking: muttered complaints in a language he only knew the most basic phrases of. The cells to Kurogane’s right – he thought three, though there may have been more; everything he’d seen of the dungeon had been through an aching head and the blurry light of torches – were a long stretch of emptiness and the guards voices’ rising, and Kurogane wondered why they’d taken him so deep into the dungeon that there was only one occupied cell beyond him.

The creak of the wheels and that damn squeaking bolt, shuddering to a halt as they came before Kurogane’s door, startled him from his thoughts. _And now me._ Clattering on the tray of the cart and the oily, wet glop of gruel being scooped into a ladle; the liquid rushing of a water pitcher being picked up, the rustling of a basket of hard bread being opened – and the heavy, stubborn creaking of the bolts as the guard crouched down to loosen them on Kurogane’s door.

He squeezed his eyes shut a whisper before the hatch opened, and even the faintest edge of the light that bled through that small square was fierce against the fringe of Kurogane’s eyelashes. On the tray by the foot of the door – where Kurogane had learned to leave it, or risk his meal being dropped on the floor – the ladle splattered its scoop of gruel into a waiting bowl, the rank smell of oats boiled with lard and water rising in still-steaming wisps to reach Kurogane where he stood. The heavy glugging of water pouring into the chipped earthen cup came next, and even just the _sound_ of it made Kurogane’s mouth feel dry. He hadn’t quite gotten to the stage of licking the damp walls from thirst yet, but it was a close thing, and the spit of droplets spilling to the stone beyond the tray made his stomach cramp.

The soft fall of a lump of bread was last, and then the light was gone, bolts slamming home barely a second later. More creaking followed, and then the rattling of the cart moving on, but Kurogane’s interest was already gone, taken by the smells and sounds of the only meal he would be given until the next day passed.

As a young boy, he had earned plenty a rap across the knuckles for eating with poor manners, and it was in much the same way that Kurogane fell upon his food now – but with the greedy haste of one starving for it rather than the eagerness of a child. The gruel was thick with fat and utterly tasteless, but it was still hot enough from when it had been boiled, and the warmth that slid down Kurogane’s throat with every hurried mouthful was something he savoured even as it made him shiver. He drank it straight from the bowl without care for the spoon that lay beside it on the tray, crouched on the floor like an animal, and when it was done, he licked the last dregs of it from the curve of the bowl. The bread was next, tough and dry and hard to chew, and Kurogane made himself slow as he ate it, not for savouring the taste but for the illusion of fullness that could come from taking his time in chewing.

It hadn’t really worked for him on all the days prior, but Kurogane had nothing but the time to keep trying.

When the bread was gone, Kurogane reached at last for the cup of water. This, he took his time with also; the reach of his hand steady and slow, and his eyes open to track what he could of shapes in the dim light creeping from the crack between door and frame. If he spilled it, he would not be given more, and the thirst that gripped him with dry, squeezing fingers would not be slaked at all.

Small, cold sips trickled down his throat, unsatisfying in the worst way, but Kurogane forced himself to pace each mouthful even so as he sat and listened with half an ear for the cart trundling back past the cells, the guards complaining as they went. A few days of this had confirmed what he had thought: this end of the dungeon was the last of it, the cell beyond his the final one, and the heavy iron door he had glimpsed at the end of the hall through squinting eyes in the moment before he’d been thrown into his own cell one that lead somewhere else entirely.

When half the water was gone, Kurogane forced himself to put down his cup to save what remained for later, and gathered up his spoon to stand in one smooth motion. “Priest,” he called, as he had every morning for the past few days now, and the steps he took towards the wall with its crack were slow and deliberate. “Priest, are you awake?” he tapped the spoon on the wall, once, twice, the belling tones of metal striking stone ringing out between their cells.

Muffled sounds. A creaking noise, of wood groaning beneath a small weight, and then footsteps slapping against damp stone.

“Yes, but as I told you before: I’m no priest now. Or do you call me so to mock me?” The voice was lilting, curling at its edges in a way that suggested the priest was the mocking one, and in spite of himself – in spite of the darkness complete and total, and the knowledge that these days past would not be his only ones spent in its embrace – Kurogane felt a grin tug just faintly at the corner of his mouth.

“Once a priest always one, at least where I come from. The gods do not let their servants go so eagerly.” Carefully, Kurogane’s fingertips edged along the small fissure in stone, feeling the sharp edges of the most recent split he’d worked into it press against torn and sore skin. The pressure in the pain felt so warm against the chill of his cell that he had to draw his fingers away before the urge to push them harder won. “Tell me, priest – the door beyond your cell, at the end of the hall. Where does it go?”

“ _Soldier_ ,” laughed the voice, with some wry slyness timeworn and brittle. “Soldier, I am no architect; I did not built this dungeon.” The rasp of ragged cloth, so loud, and Kurogane knew the man to be leaning at the wall’s side, shoulder pressed into stone. “The river, I think – some drop to the water’s edge far below us. The far wall of my cell is damp enough from the chill for dew to condense from the air, which means there is like to be water beyond it, and sometimes I can hear it churning. I have not seen it myself, but from everything I’ve heard it’s where the bodies are dragged, and I know well what the forces of Ceres do with their dead.” A pause, slow enough that Kurogane had to doubt whether the man would speak again at all, and then that voice again, soft: “I have seen enough of it before I entered this cell.”

“Priest–”

“Oh, do not call me that,” came the sigh. “Call me anything, call me friend, but do not call me _that_. I stopped my prayers the moment they threw me in the dark.” A rustle; movement unseen, heard only in its echo, and Kurogane wondered, not for the last time, what the face that spoke that voice looked like. “You know my name; I told you what it was after the first time you called me ‘Priest’. Or did you forget already? It’s so different from yours, one would think you could remember.”

Was he fair like the Ceresians all were, the mud and blood of the battlefield standing out all the more against their pallor? Was he of a kind with the monks and ascetics Kurogane had known, still and solemn with the weight of their gods’ words upon their shoulders, long fingers equally skilled with brush and pen as they were spear or staff? Were the eyes that could not see in the depth of his cell strange and pale, coloured in ways the eyes of his own people were not, blues and greens and hazels odd to look at in their sheer difference from all the faces Kurogane had known? The countries of Nihon and Ceres were separated by the mountains, but the differences in their peoples were vaster than mere earth and stone could account for.

“Fai,” said Kurogane, after a moment, and the name felt light and airy on his tongue. It was the only thing that did, in the dark.

“Kurogane,” came the teasing reply, and for all the ribbonish accent of that voice thickened the familiar sounds in strange places it was good to hear it spoken. “ _Ku_ -ro- _ga_ -ne. I should say I am sorry for the things I’ll do to your name just by speaking it – my Nihongo is not the strongest of all the languages I speak – but I dare say you’re happy to hear it said at all, yes?” He wasn’t wrong, not even a little, and Kurogane winced a little under the reprimand that came next. “Perhaps you understand now why it is important to me that you call me by my own, hmm?”

“Yes,” because Kurogane did, because names were important when they were all you had to remember who you were before you were here and a prisoner, and it would be even more meaningful for a man who had been imprisoned for months besides. _I’ve been here since spring_ , he had said, before, not long after Kurogane had first heard that voice through the crack in the wall, and the chill when Kurogane thought of all that time spent without the touch of sunlight had trickled down his spine like ice-water. _My name is Fai, and I have not spoken to another soul since the door was closed and bolted. Tell me, soldier, what is your name? How did you come to be here in the dungeons of the Crown of Ceres?_

“Fai,” said Kurogane again, by way of apology. “How did you come to speak Nihongo?” And well enough at that; certainly better than Kurogane could speak Ceresian.

“I studied it,” and this time that voice was honestly amused. “I read every book I could find, I talked to every travelling merchant that passed by my– by the temple where I was stationed. I speak _Vahlria_ , too – you know, from Valeria? Across the mountains to the west? – and a handful of other trade-tongues besides. I even have a few words of the mechanics’ speech from Autozam. But it’s only recently that I have come to use my Nihongo so often.” He paused then, long enough that Kurogane thought to sit down – a few days of chipping at stone with the end of his spoon had widened the crack enough for Fai’s voice to carry clear into Kurogane’s cell, and he might as well stretch cold and stiff limbs to ward off aching joints.

“You never did say how _you_ came to speak Ceresian, you know.”

“War,” said Kurogane bluntly, because it was true. He stretched both legs out, reaching for his toes with a grunt. “Needed to know what the soldiers we fought were saying – easier to plan, that way.” The dull burn of the tight muscles in his back tensing and releasing brought a flush of warmth to his skin, just as quickly stolen away by the chill in the air. “I was in charge of my company – I’d be no good if I didn’t understand what the enemy were up to and account for it in battle. All the officers needed to speak _some_ Ceresian.”

Fai was silent for a long moment. “Is that why you gave yourself up as a hostage? Because you knew enough of it to understand?”

Kurogane stilled. “How did you know I gave myself up?” He’d said he was a hostage, and that was obvious enough; what else would a foreign soldier alive behind enemy lines be? But Kurogane had said nothing of that fact it had been his choice to give himself over to his captors for the sake of the men and women under his charge, and accept the offer made by the captain of the forces that had outnumbered them ten to one.

“I heard the guards when they first threw you in,” said Fai gently. “They talked about a ransom, and only officers are ransomed under Ceresian military law. Those in charge make a point of it, taking officers captive in return for the lives of those ranked beneath them, ransoming for coin to line the Crown’s coffers. And when you said you were in charge of your company, it was easy enough to guess.” Kurogane said nothing, let the silence speak for itself as he stretched and twisted, keeping himself limber in defiance of the cold creeping into his bones. It hadn’t been a choice, not really – when the offer had been made he’d agreed without a thought. Safe passage for those he left behind at the price of his freedom wasn’t something he could have turned down.

“That was a good thing you did – to save your soldiers. They promised to let them go if you gave yourself up, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” said Kurogane shortly, and spoke again to change the subject. “Tell me. Where does that river where they throw the bodies lead to from here?”

“It travels underground – there’s caves honeycombed all through the mountains here. Once the river flows through them, it comes out down through the valley, and then into the forest at the foot of the mountains,” said Fai, agreeably enough. “But if you’re thinking of using it as a means of escape, I should warn you – there are rapids downhill all the way from here to the edge of the settlement. You’ll be lucky to survive the fall, let alone the teeth of the river. Assuming, of course, you can get past the guards in the first place.”

Kurogane grunted again, and not because he hauled himself to his feet once more. “Won’t have to get past them if I can get out when they’re not on patrol. We’re down the end of the dungeon. You can’t tell me the guards here are _always_ vigilant. They’re only men – they’ll still tire in the last hours of the night just like everyone else.” The opening stance of the first and most basic kata he had learned as a child came easily, even with feet so cold they felt numb. Kurogane took a slow breath, drawing his senses down and into the extension of his limbs, feeling the shift of air currents on chilled skin, listening to the roar of the blood in his veins as his steps warmed with movement. “I’ll wait until their weakest moment, and then strike.”

Fai chuckled. “Oh, you really _are_ new here if you haven’t noticed yet. The guards may only patrol down our end of the dungeon twice a day – to feed us in the eleventh hour of the morning, and to collect the buckets at the eleventh hour of the night, but I promise you there are no gaps in their shift schedule. Each guard works a shift that lasts fourteen hours, one for the day and one for the night. The head guard, of course, only comes down here when he has a good reason – such as making comfortable a new guest.” There was a smile in that voice, but it wasn’t kind. “The two guards on duty, their shifts overlap at the two points in each day where that small hatch in every cell door is open – the only window that you have for any chance of escape.” Fai’s words darkened. “They wake us in the night to keep us tired and docile; they starve us to keep us hungry and weak, and they double the guards at the times when most prisoners might think of making a break for it.”

Kurogane scowled. That, he hadn’t thought of. His sense of time underground wasn’t the best, and though he’d certainly _noticed_ being woken from his sleep by the pounding of the guards on the door to his cell before opening the hatch to demand his bucket, he hadn’t thought about why it would be in the middle of what passed for night. It made sense, as cruel as it was – the weaker the prisoners, the less likely they were to fight back.

“There’s only three ways you’ll be leaving that cell, my friend. Either your commanders pay your ransom – which is possible, but unlikely in the middle of a war – or you die of the cold at last and they drag your sorry body to the river.” The surety in Fai’s words was black and bitter, something learned, something _burned_ : a lesson not soon to be forgotten and harsh in its teaching. He’d said it before, hadn’t he - _I know well what the forces of Ceres do with their dead_. If Fai had been below the stone of the fortress for as long as he claimed – and Kurogane had no reason to believe him a liar, each word as tired and sore as it was truthful – then most likely he’d heard it himself: the slow creak of that final door opening, and the heaving of the guards as they bore the weight of a body thrown into the depths of the river that foamed below.

It may have been the truth, but it was not something Kurogane had to accept. “You said three ways.”

“Hm?” The sound was startled, soft.

“Three ways,” said Kurogane. “Three ways to leave this cell, but you only told me two. What’s the third?”

A long, quiet moment, and Kurogane’s pulse thundering loud against the silence. “Something that won’t happen to you,” said Fai smoothly, but there was a crack in his voice all the same; a quaver that had not been there before. “You’re a hostage for ransom – different from the rest of us here. The third way isn’t one you’re like to travel, even if it waits for the rest of us.”

“Humour me,” and if the words were blunt and his voice harsh, the irony wasn’t something Kurogane had the patience for. “Go on, priest – what makes my situation so different from yours?” _Why are you here? What could a humble priest from a small temple in the valley have done to be thrown into in the same dungeon as prisoners of war and the kinds of criminals that deserved to be locked away underground?_

“My _name_ is Fai,” came the sharp retort – sharp and brittle and _hurt_ – and then there were no more words at all.

* * *

Kurogane heard nothing of Fai for two days after that. Well, not _nothing_ , exactly – Kurogane certainly heard the quiet sounds of the man moving around his cell as he crossed the stone floor, as he accepted their once-daily meal, as he made use of his bucket or whimpered softly in his sleep. But not one word did Fai speak to him, and the weight of Kurogane’s apology – _Priest? Fai? I am sorry. I did not mean to – I am sorry. Please, speak to me._ – fell from his tongue and through the crack between their cells as though a stone into water, swallowed up by darkness and left unheard.

On the third day, however, it was the distant clatter of the guards that broke the stillness. The gates leading into the dungeon opened with the echo of a screech, making Kurogane start when first he heard it. It was too early in the evening for it to be the eleventh hour of night – at least, as best as Kurogane could guess – and they had already received their meal for the day besides. “The hell?” he muttered, rising from his pallet and crossing the floor to better listen for their movement down the hall. There was no familiar rattle of the cart with its squeaking wheel, but heavy booted feet stomping across stone and laughter instead, of a sort that Kurogane had not heard since this cell door had first opened up for him and he had been throw into the dark that yawned beyond.

The voices and the footsteps and the laughter grew louder. Kurogane found himself standing before the door with fists tight and heartbeat drumming against the cage of his ribs, his breath catching sharp and shallow between gritted teeth and his gut twisting with adrenaline. He counted three men: the head guard and his men. He had nothing – no weapon, no plan, but if the guards saw fit to drag him out into the light he’d raise seven kinds of hell before he made it easy for them.

Keys jangled, quickening as the footsteps stopped. Kurogane’s jaw ached, his pulse a tattoo pounding in his temples. The sound of a lock grinding open was stunningly loud, the clank and groan of disused metal tumbling into place a rusty protest – but the cell door that groaned open was not his.

“Priest! You’re coming with us! Oh, quit cowering – you, get in there and drag him out. He won’t bite if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Stop wriggling, you bastard. I’ll break your arm.”

“Lift those feet, priest! We haven’t got all night.”

The jeers and threats of the guards rang out through Fai’s cell, leaking through the crack in the wall between them and echoing against stone. Harsh orders were barked in Ceresian, bleeding into the rhythm of a muttered conversation spoken too fast for Kurogane to follow, and he almost skidded across the cold stone of the floor in his haste to get to the wall. All Kurogane could hear was the grunting struggle of Fai resisting the attempts of two guards to pull him out into the hall, and their cursing as he fought back. Fai was putting up a good fight from the sounds of it, but he was only one man – and a man that had been weakened by months of imprisonment in the cold and the dark at that.

( _I can’t remember what sunlight feels like_ , Fai had said, laughing softly as though the words had not mattered. _I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again._ )

Kurogane’s fist smacked into the wall, knuckles stinging as they scraped against stone. The sound did not carry over the scuffle, and for a moment Kurogane hated himself for the burst of sick relief of knowing he could not have been heard. The jeers of the guards broke into laughter, and Kurogane’s teeth were grinding at the short, sharp gasp that was Fai losing his fight at last, sounding pained and exhausted. He could not see to know what was happening, even if the gap between the bricks had been big enough for him to do so; the slightest glance at that bright spill of light and shadow seeping through the chipped flaw in the wall was enough to blur his sight with tears. Kurogane was forced to turn his face away as his fingernails dug into its cracked edges, eyes stinging and sore.

“For a priest he fights like a demon!”

“Get those damn chains on his legs. He won’t be kicking anymore.”

Chains clanking. Leg-irons, probably, manacled and heavy – the same shackles they’d forced on Kurogane when they marched him away from the soldiers in his command. The weight of them had dragged against his feet with every step, made his legs ache right to the bone with what they meant more than what they were: fetters of a kind that went far deeper than any limits he’d ever had before. He’d stumbled into the enemy’s arms, chains swinging between his ankles, head bowed against the knowledge that he had lost every scrap of freedom he’d called his own for the sake of those he left behind.

“There. Not so clever now, hey?”

“Shut up already. Just get him up and make him walk. Now.”

Kurogane’s fingers scraped cold against stone as dread coiled in his gut. There came the clanging whine of Fai’s door swinging as the guards forced him through it, the heavy tread of booted feet marching past his cell, and Kurogane almost tripped over his bowl and cup in his haste to reach his door. The shards of light spilling from the guard’s torches – through the crack in the wall, from between the door and its crude lintel, warped and rippling with the shadows of their steps – faded as they passed, leaving Kurogane to the dark once more.

“Fai.” The name burned on his tongue, an ember pressing against numb lips; something Kurogane wanted to swallow down to hoard its warmth. There was nothing of the forceful removal of Fai from his cell that was in any way safe. No reason for it that Kurogane could think of that did not end in disaster or death. Sure as hell it wasn’t _freedom_ that waited for him through the gateway at the end of the hall.

Kurogane could not have said how long it took for him to turn away from the door, to walk with slow steps back to his pallet where he sat with head bowed and hands between his knees. Time passed, that he knew; he felt it in the hollow churning of his gut, in the way the hot flush of anger cooled from his skin and left him chilled, his fingers numb and blood prickling in his feet where the sting of cold stone seeped through his soles. The sound of his breath was almost too loud, the vapour of each exhale damp on his skin, the drip of water from the corner of Fai’s cell metronomic in the dark.

Three ways to leave the cell, Fai had said. Three ways.

_The third way isn’t one you’re like to travel, even if it waits for the rest of us._

Execution.

It wasn’t something Kurogane had thought about. He hadn’t needed to, really. He was a hostage, after all, imprisoned for ransom – he wasn’t any good to his captors dead. No commander of Nihon would pay coin for a corpse, no matter who it had belonged to in life. And for all that his daily meal had been a meagre bowl of gruel and a chunk of bread, it was enough to keep him alive for some time. Certainly long enough for negotiations to take place. The fact that the lack of food would eventually weaken him –already had, if he was being honest – would not matter to the guards, not in the slightest. Provided Kurogane didn’t keel over and die from the cold, they wouldn’t give a damn what state he was in when he was finally handed over, as long as he was still breathing.

The same could not be said of the other prisoners in the dungeon.

“It’s not the first time you’ve known someone to die before their time.” It would not be the last, either. Kurogane had killed enemy soldiers, and seen those he knew slain beside him in battle. He’d lain to rest many men and women over the years the border war between Ceres and Nihon had raged, and assuming he made it out of the dungeon in enough of a state to keep fighting, he probably would many more. The life of one priest, no matter how kind, was only a single piece on the game board the lords played – and not even an important piece, at that.

“Wherever you are now, priest, I hope your gods have mercy.” Kurogane took a slow breath, felt it creep cold into his lungs. “Because when I get out of here,” he sighed, words heavy like fog as they left his lips, “I won’t be giving any to the bastards that killed you.”

The pallet creaked uneasily beneath him as Kurogane stood, and the slap of his feet on the stone floors was muted by the dull roar in his ears, the drum of his blood pounding in time with each staccato breath. His hand met the wall, his palm scraping rough over stone, cloth catching from the bandage he’d tied days before and Kurogane jerked his hand back with a grunt, lifting it to his face and tearing at the knot of cloth with his teeth. The scrap of fabric fluttered free, brushing his wrist and tumbling into the dark where it fell – but Kurogane could neither see nor care where it landed.

The bared skin of his palm stung where cool air brushed it, the scrape still a little raw even after so many days, but the flare and spike of pain where Kurogane curled his fingers into a fist was ignored in favour of the ache in his chest. The same urge for violence that overtook him in the moment before battle – that space and time where the air hung electric and each breath felt slow and magnified, his heartbeat humming in anticipation of what was to come – was growing in his gut, powerful for all it was pointless. He was alone and unarmed, primed for action where there was none to be had, and everything he felt would amount to nothing here and now.

But if he saved it, cupped it in his hands like an ember and gave it slow breath to keep it glowing and warm, the moment he was given the chance to spend it, _oh_ – that burning moment the locks were turned and the heavy door to this cell groaned open and the guards stepped in at last, Kurogane would have his revenge. And for that, he would need a weapon.

The pallet was useless to him – no legs to break off, and the brackets that held it up were bolted too firmly to the wall besides. His tray was flimsy, and while the bowl and cup were pottery that would yield shards if broken, it probably wasn’t the best idea considering a bludgeon would be of more use than a makeshift knife. Using his bucket might be satisfying, and was definitely something he’d keep in mind, but it was probably better that he stick to the basics – and what was more basic than a rock in his fist?

Kurogane’s hands found the crack in the wall, fingertips tracing along its chipped and cracked edges like they had in days since past. Working at the edges of the fissure with the blunt metal of his spoon had loosened chips and shards and all manner of grit, and the grout that held this brick to its fellows had surely weakened beneath the force of movement both his efforts and Fai’s own had driven into stone. If Kurogane could just wrench it free, even just a part of the brick where the crack had split it in two, the weight of stone in his fist would be more than enough to bring his vengeance down upon those that had killed the priest – killed the man that had given him a voice to speak to, a kindness unexpected in the dark.

_Be calm. Keep your wits about you. You have the time. You will kill them, and you will be free._

The impact of Kurogane’s fist against stone shuddered up his arm, a wrench of heat and motion that warmed chilled skin and brought a fire to his muscles as it crunched into the wall. Grit and chunks of rock dug into his skin, bringing blood to the surface where it speckled his knuckles, but Kurogane could barely feel the pain past the satisfaction of the blow. Where his fist had landed, stone had felt it – a tremor racing through the wall and crumbling grout in a dusty tumble. A few more blows like that, and he might yet weaken the mortar enough to prise a chunk of the brick out–

The ringing screech of rusty hinges jerked Kurogane from his thoughts in the same moment he heard it, and his head swung towards the door and the faint line of light bleeding beneath it with startled urgency.

_The guards._

It couldn’t be the eleventh hour already, surely – not enough time had passed since last he’d heard those heavy booted steps stomping up the hall, and besides, there were more than two men approaching by their footsteps. At least three, from what Kurogane could hear, and something being heaved along behind them as well: a dull scrape against stone as whatever-it-was dragged back against the pull of the guards and made them curse with its heaviness.

Ice cramped in Kurogane’s gut. Fai had said it, hadn’t he – the final door at the end of the hall lead to the river, where the guards dropped the bodies of the prisoners to be swept into the raging waters that foamed about the rocks below. And if the priest really was dead, then the drag of his corpse down the hall might be the last thing Kurogane ever heard of him.

“For someone so skinny, he sure is heavy. Damn bony bastard.”

“Pull harder, would you? The quicker we dump him the quicker we get back upstairs where it’s warm. It’s freezing down here.”

“Speak for yourself – I wasn’t even supposed to start my shift for another three hours.”

“Whatever. Move out of the way, the both of you, so I can get the door open.”

The clanking of chains against stone rattled through the hallway, and Kurogane frowned. Chains? What was the point of chaining up a dead body? For weight he could understand – but stone would serve just as well as iron chains for that, and it would be easy enough to just wrap the corpse in cloth with rocks shoved in its bindings rather than to wind chains around it.

The clinking jangle of keys again, a guard muttering lowly under his breath in curses Kurogane couldn’t quite catch – and then the grinding scrape of a door being forced open at the cell beside him, the sudden flash of light through the crack in the wall making his eyes water as Kurogane ducked down beneath it, crouched low against the wall with his heart hammering in his chest.

“Get those chains off.”

“Yeah, yeah – move your skinny arse, priest, and get back in your cage where you belong.”

_Priest?_

The heavy tumble of a body hitting the ground and skidding across stone made the hair on the back of Kurogane’s neck stand up, chills breaking out across his skin and hope surging through his veins so quick it made his head spin. Was Fai still alive? Had the guards not killed him after all? He had to press his hands against stone to stop them shaking with adrenaline, the sting of his lip caught between his teeth the only thing keeping Kurogane from calling out to make sure.

“Lazy bastard. Made us drag you all the way down here because you wouldn’t walk. Bet you’d march quicker if we lit a fire under you–”

“Shut up and get back so I can shut the damn door.”

The grinding clank of the lock ratcheting into place was almost as much of a relief as the dying of the light as the door slammed closed – and the quickening steps of the guards as they marched back up the hall sped the heartbeat pounding in Kurogane’s ears as he surged to his feet.

“Fai?” he hissed, leaning as close to the crack in the wall as he possibly could. “Fai?”

The hoarseness of his voice had no echo, and the helpless flutter of anxiety in Kurogane’s gut was enough to make the bile rise in the back of his throat, but the soft and grunting huff of breath that was the sound of a man hauling himself up from the floor met his call with answer enough.

“Mother have _mercy_ ,” groaned Fai, and the husky exhaustion of his voice made Kurogane’s nerves prickle, his senses straining for every faint noise he could hear. “I’m going to feel that tomorrow… and probably into next week. _Oh_.” Another grunt, and the creaking of weathered wood; a weight upon the edge of Fai’s pallet then, and the priest braced against it to better force himself upright with a scuffling shuffle of sound. Bare feet on stone, and the damp slap of footsteps dragging heavy limbs closer, chased by a mutter of words Kurogane didn’t understand, some language he didn’t speak.

“Kurogane?” asked Fai at last, and the tense knot in Kurogane’s chest unravelled as quickly as it had tangled. “Please tell me that’s you, and they haven’t thrown me into some other cell in this gods-forsaken hole.”

“I thought you were _dead_ ,” blurted Kurogane, instead of anything that might have been _yes_ or _I’m here_ ; but maybe that was what Fai needed to hear, laughter creaking from his chest like bones grinding under pressure and sounding just as painful as he drew closer. “I thought they’d taken you away to–”

“Execute me?” Fai’s voice was gentle. “Not I, Kurogane. There’s another soul due to die tonight.”

And if Kurogane felt guilty for how quickly relief it wasn’t Fai swamped the thought that another prisoner was going to die, it was only for a moment. Callous perhaps, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d lived through too many close calls on the battlefield, too many moments of _what if_ or _if I had just_ to let himself linger on them – better to look to the future rather than the past.

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” said Fai quietly, and Kurogane’s jaw creaked as his teeth ground together. “I know I did not speak to you and I would understand if – if you did not want to–”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Kurogane shortly, because it _didn’t_. “What happened? Where did they take you?”

Fai sighed, reflexive and slow, and at the sound of it something in Kurogane’s chest loosened. “I mentioned before… I was a healer at the temple I served in.” The undercurrents in his voice were deep and dragging, and Kurogane remembered: remembered the anger in Fai’s voice as he whispered into the dark a confession – _my power gives me nothing only a healing touch what’s the point what good is the power in my fingertips the blessing of my god if I cannot use it to save myself if I could have defended myself when they came for me I could have saved them I could have stopped them a healing touch doesn’t work on the dead_ – that rang hopeless and soft.

“Yes,” said Kurogane, and nothing else, because he had long suspected those words had been ones he was not meant to have heard.

“It helped keep me alive,” said Fai. “I would not have survived so long without it – if I could not heal myself.” He laughed a little, voice catching on a rasp. “I can heal others, too, if I can lay my hands on them. Not well,” and here his words turned rueful. “Not well enough to be a miracle, but it is usually enough.”

“You were taken… to heal someone?”

“The prisoner due to be executed,” began Fai, and then stopped; dragged a slow and hitching breath through his teeth. Kurogane’s hand pressed against the wall, tension in his fingertips, stringing tight through every tendon. “I don’t know his name,” said Fai. “I don’t know what he did or why he is here – whether he deserves the death they will give him.” Another breath, still slow. “He thought to end his life before the guards did. Broke his bowl and used the shards.”

And Kurogane knew without it being said that the prisoner had failed; had either made the cuts too small or too shallow, or had not bled quickly enough before the guards found him. “He lives?”

“At my hands,” said Fai. “I’m – I still have his blood. In my fingernails. On my skin.” The scuffing sound of hands dragging rough over threadbare cloth, Fai scrubbing his palms against his chest in quick, sharp movements. “He lives for now. He won’t live through the night.”

“You did what you could,” said Kurogane roughly, and the words were stony and hard, heavy in his mouth. “Pries– _Fai_. You did what you could.”

“Oh, I know I did,” laughed Fai, and the sound was _awful_. “I always do. The wounds won’t even scar.” Kurogane could hear the snarl, rumbling in the husk of Fai’s words, rolling thick against the edges of his voice as his breath creaked and sighed like something broken. “Won’t matter, though – his execution is due at the eleventh hour all the same.”

Kurogane wanted to ask what the point of it was, but he already knew, and Fai would be better without that question being asked. “Why the eleventh hour?” he asked, instead, because it was still something that ate at him. In Nihon, the condemned were killed at dawn, as the sun rose – there had been poems written about it, the kind that drew metaphors from the red of the sky and the red of the blood spilled. Kurogane was no poet, and had never seen the appeal.

“It’s when the gods close their eyes,” said Fai, and against stone the words echoed. “The world was born at midnight. It’s born again every night, and in the dark hour before its birth, the gods look away.”

He broke the spell with a derisive snort. “Or so the priests have always said. Don’t ask me why they feed us at the eleventh hour of the morning – that, I think, is mere convenience as timed by their shifts.” There was a shuffle of fabric rasping thin against stone, Fai turning to the wall and pressing himself against it. “I gave him his rites,” he said, speaking again after a moment of heavy quiet. “They asked me to.”

Kurogane was silent.

“It was something of a game to them, I think – to have me give the rites of death to a man condemned.” If bitterness were a sound, it was Fai’s voice. “And so I did. I gave him the blessings and absolved him, as I have been ordained to do, and never mind that I have been defrocked. What else could I have done?” he asked suddenly, voice crackling plaintive and sharp, and the sound of his fist smacking against stone was hard and angry. “I had denied him the right to _choose_ – to die by his own hand. I healed him only so that they could slit his throat again.”

The soft, hopeless sound that came next – of Fai drawing a choking breath, of tears barely withheld and the undue self-hatred of a man wronged in all ways – was one Kurogane would have given much to be spared from; but as it was, he was Fai’s only witness and he would not turn away. Fai needed to speak, and Kurogane would listen.

“I can’t live like this,” whispered Fai. “I thought – I thought that perhaps I would be strong enough to endure it. That when the war ended and the Crown was overthrown I might win my freedom and it would all be worth it, in the end. So many saints have suffered more than I, so many martyrs have died for their cause under worse torture than this. How weak must I be that I cannot cope after only so little? But I don’t th _-think_ ,” and Fai stuttered, his breath a shudder that clawed something sharp through Kurogane’s breast. “I d-don’t think that I _can_ –”

“Enough,” said Kurogane softly, but with all the strength he had. “ _Enough_. You’re no saint, and you’re not going to die a martyr. What god would want that?” Kurogane swallowed hard, forced the anger down. It was not Fai that gave him cause to rage, but what had been done to him, and Fai should not bear the brunt of his temper. “No one should have to go through what you have. That you’ve kept yourself alive for so long only goes to show how much steel you’ve got in you.” But steel was only steel, in the end; it could break like any other metal, shatter into brittle shards from rough treatment, become something that could not be reforged no matter how hot the fire. Even if Fai’s soul was steel through and through – and nothing Kurogane knew of him suggested otherwise – the rest of him was only mortal besides.

“We’re getting out of here, and damn the war,” said Kurogane, with all the force of an oath. “I’m not dying underground, and neither are you.”

There was silence for a long moment. “I know you will be ransomed,” said Fai quietly. “The courts will make it happen – the last days of war bleed money from the coffers like nothing else, and if there’s something war needs more than men it’s coin. It will happen soon, I should think,” he continued, oblivious to the scowl that deepened across Kurogane’s brow. “Everything I have heard suggests that Ceres is losing, and losing badly; the tide is turning in Nihon’s favour as surely as her armies march upon the mountains. You should only be imprisoned for a few weeks more at the very most–”

“You know, for an educated man, you’re one hell of an idiot,” snapped Kurogane. “I said _we_ , didn’t I? I’m not leaving you behind to rot, you bastard.”

“You don’t,” and the sharp intake of Fai’s breath was loud and painful. “You don’t even know me, Kurogane. Why would you – I _don’t_ –”

“I don’t need to know you to know you aren’t my enemy,” said Kurogane bluntly. “Besides, at this point, you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got – and I don’t leave my friends to die.”

Silence met his words once more, but Kurogane kept doggedly on, determined that Fai should hear and _understand_. “I’m not waiting for my ransom. Even if Ceres falls, even if Nihon’s armies sweep it clean from border to border, it could be _months_ before anyone thinks to free the prisoners locked up underground. And that’s assuming we don’t starve to death first.” Kurogane took a slow breath. “When the chance comes, we have to seize it. And I mean _we_ – sure as hell I’m not getting out of here without you. I don’t know the first thing about the lay of the land here, and you lived in this valley. At the very least I need someone who speaks Ceresian better than I do, and doesn’t look like the enemy. And I _suppose_ having a healer along wouldn’t be so bad, either. Might come in handy,” he added dryly.

That last remark was meant to be vaguely insulting, in the hopes of provoking a response to ease the dread air strung between their cells, and the single huff of harsh breath it earnt could have almost been a laugh in return.

“You’re a very brave man, Kurogane,” said Fai faintly. His voice was cracked and soft, still hurting in a way that would take a long time to heal – but it did not ring with despair like it had moments before.

“It’s called being _reckless_ ,” was Kurogane’s quick retort, and if he was grinning, then so be it. It was the same grin he’d worn to every battle he’d ever won, and this war was not his to lose. “I’m pretty good at it. And I swear to you – we’re getting out of here alive.”

“Somehow,” sighed Fai, “I find I believe you.”

* * *

The creaking of the gates woke Kurogane from a dreaming doze, the dark behind his eyes heavier than that which met them when they opened. The gloom of the cell was broken by the distant torchlight that bled beneath the door, spilling across the stone in warped and twisting shadows. He had not slept for long at all, but he had still slept – and at Fai’s urging no less. _Better to sleep than to wait in the dark for something you cannot change_ , the priest had said, and Kurogane had to agree; a man would die tonight whether or not he stayed awake, and he had already lost time today he normally tried to rest through besides.

Slowly, Kurogane rose from the pallet, and the faint and echoed rasp of dragging cloth from down the hallway dogged his unsteady steps towards the wall. Kurogane’s fingertips trailed slow over the pattern of bricks he had come to know better than the maps he’d studied at the start of the war, and he found the crack as though drawn to it, fingers hooking around its chipped and crumbling edges as he pulled himself closer to where the priest was waiting for him.

“They could at least carry him,” murmured Fai, even before Kurogane had announced himself. Beyond the doors of their cells, the clank-and-jangle of chains scraped dully over the slabs beneath, a weight Kurogane felt ghost through Fai’s words. “Would it be too much to give him that small kindness?” Fai sighed softly, and even that felt heavy on the air, as though it cost him much to speak.

“Did you sleep?” Kurogane’s voice was as tired as his words, and he bowed towards the wall without thinking to let his shoulder rest heavy against cool stone.

“No,” said Fai quietly. “I know I told you to rest but I – I kept thinking about it. I have never been one to take my own advice,” he added at the last, voice dipping as he turned towards Kurogane – or more likely, away from his own door and the heavy steps of the guards beyond it. “They’re getting closer.”

The guards did not speak – not a word, not a single off-colour curse or rumbling complaint – but Kurogane could hear them still: the drag of coarse sackcloth, its rough grain scraping against the ground; the heavy rattle of chain links as they clanked against stone and each other; the huffing of effortful breath as two men bore the weight of the dead between them. His own breath fogged from his lips, cool vapour he could sense but not see, and Kurogane wondered when it was that he’d stopped feeling the chill of the room for the numbness of his fingers and toes.

“How.” Kurogane coughed once, mouth dry enough he had to wet his lips before he could speak clearly. “How would they have–?”

“Slit his throat,” said Fai, after a little while. Kurogane hadn’t really expected to get an answer even if it was a question he needed to ask, but the one that came was hard in a way that suggested brittle sharpness. “They would have starved him yesterday – it’s traditional to make prisoners fast the day before their death. No point wasting a meal on a corpse.”

The light creeping through the space between the stone lintel and the edge of the door wavered, grew brighter. “That’s how you know you’re going to die soon.” Fai’s voice faded to a hush, crackling with bitterness and only just audible over the grating rasp of the body being dragged down the hall. “When the guards come by but you are given nothing – not even water.”

“We’re not going to die here,” said Kurogane, because it was the only thing he really could. The heaving clank of dragging chains cut through the air as the footsteps stopped, and beneath his fingers stone creaked uneasily, muted counterpoint to the sharp and sudden grating of heavy bolts being unlocked – the iron door at the end of the hallway groaning open at last.

The howl of the wind was immediate, a wailing gust of cold air that whistled between stone and iron to chase cool eddies into their cells, carrying with it the breath of the river that wound beneath the fortress, the taste of _wet_ and _rust_ and _winter_. Fai’s sharp inhale could barely be heard over the rush of it, the sound soft but wounded, and the final heaving rustle of cloth echoed the groaning of the guards – the body hauled up into their arms, no doubt, and their staggering steps heavy and loud as they approached the waiting ledge.

Kurogane waited for the count, but there wasn’t one: just a stretched and painful moment culminating in a heaving grunt and a whistling clank, and then the long fall before the body hit the water with a sinking, heavy smash. The shrieking wind buffeted against the closing door, metal groaning against the cold squalls that spiralled up from the river below as the guards forced it shut with a deafening clang, and then cut out with abrupt force; Kurogane’s blood pounded in his ears for the sudden, ringing silence that fell over the dungeon like a veil.

“May the Mother receive you with kindness, and hold you to her breast once more,” murmured Fai, voice soft with the thick accent of his native Ceresian. There were no gods Kurogane would name in this moment, but the soldier’s prayer was present in his thoughts: _wherever you go next, may it be better than here_. He bowed his head briefly, a pointless gesture with no one to see it, but it felt right to do so all the same.

The voices of the guards cut through the solemnity of the moment, starting with a dull groan and a hoarse curse. “Bastard could’ve spared a dozen meals, not just one.”

“Shut up,” snapped the other guard, and the rattle of keys came before the ratcheting clank of bolts and locks slamming home. “Anyone would think you were on the frontlines already for how much you complain.”

“I’m just sayin’, there’s _got_ to be an easier way to dump the bodies–”

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut, it’ll be _you_ in the river next. Move it.”

The soft and furious intake of breath from the cell beside his own was enough to prickle his skin with anger, and Kurogane had to ease his fingers carefully free of the hard grip his hand had taken against the edge of the crack, its sharp edges pressing into the curve of his palm. He’d killed before, and would probably kill again; the life of one who lived on the battlefield rarely afforded opportunities for mercy. But he had always dealt death with an even, steady hand – each cut from the sword meant to kill quickly and clean. His soldiers had given the slain their due respect, and the end of each battle saw the pyres lit and sutras spoken for any spirits left restless. To throw away the life of a man with such callous indifference was something else entirely.

“Go back upstairs,” hissed Fai, and the soft scrape of his fingernails against stone raised the hair on the back of Kurogane’s neck. “ _Leave_.”

Two pairs of footsteps stomped back past their cells, the torchlight wavering with their passage where it crept beneath the edge of iron. The echoes of the gates slamming closed took a long time to die away.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” said Fai eventually, his voice level and flat, anger cramped into its edges. A deep breath shuddered in the dark. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

Kurogane’s hand smoothed over the wall, feeling the places where grout had crumbled and stone had cracked, thin fissures that caught beneath the trail of his fingernails and scraped against the tender edges of worn skin. “You can help me.” A chip of stone came loose beneath his searching touch, tumbling carelessly down. “Before,” he started, and had to swallow to keep his voice level. “Before, when I believed you dead, I swore that I would have my revenge. That the ones who killed you would pay for it.” Another scatter of stone, small pieces crumbling away at his fingertips. “And I mean to keep that oath.”

Another moment of silence, this one pensive. “You can’t take revenge for the death of a man still living,” said Fai gently, with a soft sound Kurogane knew to be his hand pressing carefully against the wall, as though to reach through stone to where Kurogane stood.

The tight heat gripping his throat made it hard to speak, and it took Kurogane three tries to get the words, as simple as they were, past his lips. “Watch me.”

“Kurogane…”

It was strange, how _kind_ Fai’s voice was; as though the priest sought to give him comfort. Strange in the face of how he had suffered more than Kurogane had, by any measure, and comfort was not something that Kurogane could or would accept regardless. “I want to break this brick free from the wall,” was what he said, instead of anything like _I’m sorry_ or _I will not let you stop me_. His knuckles rapped against stone. “It’s loose – you can hear it. The crack splits it down the middle, makes it more manageable. If we work together, _really_ work at it, we should have it out in a few hours.”

There was a long and thoughtful silence, the kind that Kurogane had always found uncomfortable, and when Fai spoke again his voice was still soft, still gentle. “If I cannot sleep, I may as well make the most of my time,” he said, and Kurogane could hear the quiet patter of his fingertips running over the cracks and fissures that had worked through stone and grout on his side of the wall. “I can tell you won’t be dissuaded, and if you mean for us to leave together–”

“Yes,” because Kurogane did, would not have it any other way.

“–then tell me what I need to do.”

Kurogane took three short, deep breaths. _Thank you_. “We’ve been chipping at the crack to widen it, and that’s helped to weaken the stone – but we need to work on the grout around the brick instead if we want to pull it free completely.” He outlined the shape of the stone with his hands, dragging them across the lines of crumbling mortar and feeling the grit rise beneath the tracks of his fingers. “It’s already weak here, in this one place.” His knuckles rapped against the wall. “I don’t know why and honestly, I don’t care – I’m not a mason,” Kurogane muttered, and the soft huff of something that almost sounded like laughter from Fai birthed hope in his chest, “but it’s a flaw we can exploit. Get your spoon. Better to use metal than your fingertips.”

“Alright,” said Fai, and there was a note in his voice that Kurogane had not heard before. “Alright. You can get started, if you like – I’ll follow your lead.”

It only took a moment for Fai to slip away and return, the sound of his steps near silent in their lightness, and when he drew close again, Kurogane heard the _tap-tap-tap_ of his spoon dragging against the bricks as he counted them across the wall. The sounds were small but clear, a counterpoint to the scraping crunch of Kurogane chipping at damp and mouldering grout. “Feel out the mortar around the brick with your fingers – find a place where the grit of it feels crumbling to the touch. It should give easy enough.”

“Alright,” said Fai once more, and bent to his task with determination, the chip-and-scrape of his efforts loud against the stillness that hung around them. It didn’t take long at all for the silence of the room to set Kurogane’s nerves on edge – the sound of crumbling mortar and the faint drip of water from the distant corner of Fai’s own cell more than enough to set his teeth to grinding. Why, Kurogane could not have said – something so small as mere silence should not have unnerved him, not after so long spent locked into this damn cell he could walk clear from one end to another without caring for the darkness – but the unease was there, and the pounding of his heartbeat rose against it.

“Please say something,” said Fai, suddenly, and Kurogane startled badly enough his spoon jerked in his grip, skidding across the wall with a gouging scrape that rained grit down across his bare feet.

“What?”

“Speak to me,” said Fai quietly. “I – all I can hear is my own thoughts and I’d rather… rather hear something else.” And _that_ , Kurogane understood; because the silence seemed empty somehow, as though the world outside these cells in this corner of the dungeon had fallen away, leaving them the only two souls adrift in the dark.

Kurogane took a steady breath; tasted stone dust and the damp chill of stale air on his tongue. “A bath.”

“Hm?”

“A bath. That’s the first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here.” Kurogane paused for a moment, tapping at the wall with his fingers and knocking free a soft tumble of grit and sand. “A long, slow, _hot_ bath. And a shave,” he added, dipping his head to wipe away the first drops of sweat starting to prick his skin on the shoulder of his undershirt, the roughness of his stubble scratching against worn and dirty cloth. “I haven’t been this filthy since I was a child, and this unshaven since I was a raw recruit.” Not that he’d ever been particularly hirsute in the first place, but he’d been a soldier and clean-shaven by habit – a habit he sorely missed now, after days and nights in the grit and grime of a dungeon. Gods, what he wouldn’t give to feel _clean_ again.

Fai laughed, the sound bright enough to startle a grin across Kurogane’s face. “Speak for yourself – I haven’t had a bath in months! And the last time I had a haircut was when I was an acolyte.” The soft cadence of Fai’s words seemed thoughtful, rather than pained, and Kurogane made a mindless noise of agreement as though to say _keep talking_. It was good to hear Fai speak, even on so meaningless a topic. “My hair was always kept long, in the style of the clergy. It’s all a tangle now – and so’s the beard I never wanted too, I suppose. I tried to keep myself neat when first I was thrown in here,” he added, and the grate of metal against brick quickened a little even as that gentle voice stayed even. “I didn’t know how long they would keep me for, and I thought that if I better looked the part of a humble priest wrongfully imprisoned, they might realise their mistake sooner.”

The fact that here Fai remained spoke for itself as to how his hopes had been dashed.

“Why?” asked Kurogane, because the question had weighed on him for some time. “Why are you here? What could you have done to be locked up like this?”

There was a long moment where Fai did not answer, only the chiselling scrape and the huff of his breath as he worked at the wall. “I helped someone,” he said, after a while. “Someone who the doctrines of my faith believed I should have let die. I didn’t leave them. I couldn’t. And when the cardinals found out what I’d done, I was called before the inquisitional courts to defend myself.”

“You healed a soldier from Nihon.” It wasn’t much of a guess, really; Fai’s proficiency in Nihongo was too good for mere studying to be the source of his skill, and the edge of the battlelines were not so far from here – not so far that a small temple in a small village at the foot of the valley would not have found itself caught in the middle of a skirmish between scouting parties. It didn’t take much to picture a wounded soldier stumbling upon the steps of a church, or the kind priest who might have met them on the steps. Everything Kurogane knew of Fai so far suggested he was the kind of man who would not hesitate to save the life of an enemy soldier, regardless of what the laws of his creed had to say about it.

“I don’t regret it,” and here Fai sighed, a soft breath that sounded so, so tired. “I would do it again. Though next time, I might keep my thoughts on the pointlessness of war to myself,” and if his voice was just a little bitter, then Kurogane could not blame him. “They told me I was lucky I had not simply been branded a traitor and executed on the spot – that imprisonment was mercy, for my many years of selfless dedication and faithful service.”

“You did the right thing.” A loose chunk of stone, easily as big as Kurogane’s thumb, broke off with a crack from the corner of the brick. Kurogane’s knuckles scraped against the rough edges of the brick as he prised it loose, the sting of cold air on suddenly raw skin ignored.

“I know,” said Fai simply.

The silence that fell this time was more companionable than the last, and the steady rhythm of their work lulled Kurogane into something almost like calm. Not quite – they were both still trapped in the hands of the enemy, with no weapons and nothing but the most basic of plans for escape, and that was too much for Kurogane to be at peace in the face of. But it was enough to let the surge of adrenaline ebb low for now, and the tightness at his temples eased just enough to forestall a headache.

“You know, I’m still not sure how you think a chance to escape will show itself.” Fai’s words ran lilting counterpoint to the slow chipping of dull metal against stone. “Even if you plan to ambush a guard, you can only do so when the door to your cell is opened – and the only way I can see that happening is when your ransom is paid and your freedom assured besides.” The blunt edge of Kurogane’s spoon dragged against the grout between bricks, gouging deep, and a small shower of damp dust fell across the stickiness of blood. “And besides,” added Fai, his words as dry as Kurogane had ever heard them, “even if an opportunity _does_ arise, you’ll most likely still be outnumbered two to one, or maybe even three to one, assuming the head guard gets off his fat behind and makes the trek down to this dank corner of hell in the first place.”

“Harsh language for someone that used to be a priest,” grunted Kurogane, leaving off on the grout and wedging the handle of his spoon into the crack to lever his weight against it. “And I told you – I’m not waiting for my ransom. Any time they open that door, no matter what for, _that’s_ when I’ll take my chances. Even if I _am_ outnumbered,” he snapped, forestalling the protest he could feel coming even before Fai had chance to speak. “Numbers aren’t everything, and it won’t be the first time I’ve beaten the odds.” Beneath the strength of his leverage, rock creaked softly, crunching into grit. “Anyway. You said before the guards were muttering about demand for soldiers back at the capital.”

“Yes,” said Fai slowly, pausing for a moment; Kurogane heard the rustle of fabric moving, and Fai’s voice turned briefly muffled as he scuffed at his face with the edge of a sleeve. “The head guard was hinting that the pool of recruits was running low, and there might be a shuffle of positions soon.”

“See?” The thin handle of the spoon, already growing slippery with cold sweat, creaked under the force of Kurogane’s grip. “I bet you any sum you care to name that sooner or later, at least one of them will be called back to fight. That’s what happens in war – no matter how safe or cushy your position, when your army starts losing, it’s everyone and anyone that can hold a sword back to the frontlines.” The words of the guards from before were still clear in his mind – _anyone would think you were on the frontlines already_ – and if what Fai had heard while in custody was correct, his suspicions were more likely than not.

“I don’t gamble,” said Fai, and the teasing note in his voice was completely unwelcome. “Priest, remember? Gambling is a sin.” He blew hard against stone, then, and the huff of his breath fanned up a cloud of itching dust to trickle through the crack and stick against Kurogane’s skin. “I hope you’re right, though.”

“Gambling is a sin. Drinking is a sin. Taking revenge on your enemies is a sin,” muttered Kurogane. “Your faith says anything remotely like fun is a sin.” Another forceful wrench, metal slipping against his palm as he forced the spoon in deeper for more leverage and his elbow scraping sorely against stone through the thin cloth of his undershirt. “And I don’t need to hope I’m right – I _know_ I am.”

“That’s the way of it,” agreed Fai, and perhaps he would have said something else but for the sharp splintering shudder of stone grinding against stone that cracked into the air. “ _Oh!_ I can feel – it’s moving!”

Kurogane only grunted, huffing breath through gritted teeth. Sweat bloomed on his face in earnest now, trickling stinging into his eyes as the muscles in his back started to burn, and the scratching of Fai's spoon against stone became more urgent as they worked. Kurogane could feel the give in it now, but it wasn’t coming easy, and the strain was harder than it should have been for a man of his strength.

“A little more,” said Fai, breathless, and there was a brief clatter of dull metal as he stabbed at the cracks in stone, the bowl of the spoon skittering across the wall at the force of his blows. “You've got the leverage,” he grunted, and there was a splintering sound from his side of the wall, followed by a soft, dusty patter that grew louder by the moment – tiny chips of stone tumbling from the wall and to the ground below, and the creak of stone groaning as mortar weakened. “Kurogane, just a little _more_ –”

Sweat and dust made Kurogane's face itch, and the sting of salt on cracked lips made his mouth dry. Each breath burned sore from thirst, no matter the damp chill of the air, and in his hands the thin metal of the spoon bent in slow inches as he wedged it between unyielding stone – but it _was_ moving, and he couldn’t stop now. “ _Get back_ ,” Kurogane bit out in warning, teeth grinding, and the gasp and scrabble of Fai stumbling away said he’d heard, and that was enough for Kurogane, who bore down on his makeshift lever with everything he had left, his chest heaving like a bellows.

The thunderous retort of stone finally, _finally_ giving way cracked across the room like a mountain falling, shockingly loud as one half of the brick shot out of the wall and tumbled into the dark of the cell beyond with a skipping crash – and the handle of the spoon snapped in Kurogane’s hand, metal sheared clean through from the force and spiralling out of his grip. A hot slash of pain tore across his left palm, hard and callused skin ripping open beneath the jagged edge like wet paper, blood oozing in a hot, slick gush through Kurogane’s fingers and splattering to the floor below.

Kurogane jerked away from the hole in the wall, slamming his back flat against stone as a pained groan hissed through his teeth and his knees wobbled at the shock of it. He clapped one hand over the meat of his palm, sealing the wound as best he could and holding steady the arm that trembled in fits and starts.

_“Kurogane!”_

“It’s fine,” he grunted. Blood dripped down his forearm, a thick stream trickling to his elbow and soaking hot through his sleeve. “The damn thing snapped – my _hand_ –”

Metal had torn across the tender skin of his palm – the same palm he’d all but scraped open on the grit and gravel of the floor when he’d first been thrown into the cell by the guards. And if Kurogane had been hurt worse before – and the thick and silvery scar where an arrowhead had punched into his thigh was testimony enough of that – he’d also been in armour, and on the battlefield, and in the state of mind to be prepared for pain; not half-starved and freezing in a filthy dungeon, shut away from the light where he couldn’t even see to tell if a bloody chunk of flesh had just been gouged from him.

“Kurogane, please!” Fai’s voice was urgent, spilling clean through the hole they’d broken into the wall. “Give me your hand – I can _help_!”

Teeth chattering and skin prickling with cold – _not good, I’m going into shock_ – Kurogane staggered back to that voice, bare feet unsteady on the chips and chunks of stone littering the ground, throwing out his other hand to catch himself as he stumbled. Blood slicked across stone in a gritty smear where his hand slipped down the wall, and when reached out to find Fai’s hand in the dark, his breath was coming fast and harsh.

“Give me your hand,” said Fai again, firmer now; something in his tone seemed to reach through the pain and take hold of it, demanding obedience. “ _Now_ , Kurogane.”

Bloody fingers slipped against the edge of the gap – so much bigger than it had been before, wide enough to fit a hand through comfortably and more besides – to find their bearing, and blindly Kurogane thrust his bleeding hand into the gaping dark, trusting Fai would find him. And Fai did.

The first touch of fingertips to his own was clumsy, a stuttering brush of no more substance than a sigh – but then long fingers, thin and sure and impossibly _warm,_ closed about his wrist without care for the slick of gore, and had Kurogane to shudder as the shock of that grip shot up his arm in a wash of sensation. Heat in that touch, prickling across his skin, and a shivering breath hooked in Kurogane’s throat at the soft glow of light that bloomed into existence between Fai’s fingers, casting blue ripples across filthy stone and bleeding into the dark in a spill of radiance.

It should have hurt to look upon, should have brought tears stinging to eyes unused to the light, but somehow it _didn’t._ Kurogane stared, unable – unwilling – to move as the pain withered beneath Fai’s touch, numbed by gentle heat as that hand slid over his palm, and slender fingers curled between his own to bind their hands tight to one another as Fai’s magic glowed and flared, rolling in waves that washed shadows across the walls. Kurogane could feel a heartbeat, pulsing in his hand; an echo of a life not his own, and even as that light began to dim the pain did not return. The warmth of that healing touch seemed to soak deep into his bones, smoothing away the aches of tiredness and strain upon every part of him it could reach.

When at last the light was gone, winking out between one breath and the next, Fai sighed, long and slow and weary. “ _There_ ,” he murmured. “That should be… enough. Mm.” The words slurred a little at the end, in a way Kurogane had not heard before, that voice sounding half-drunk and wholly exhausted – but Fai’s fingers were still tangled with his own, the touch wet and sticky with the remnants of Kurogane’s blood and somehow still warm in spite of it. “Forgive me,” said Fai then, still sounding so tired, and Kurogane could not even think of why Fai would need his forgiveness in any way.

“It takes a lot out of me,” he murmured softly, and there was the rustle of cloth and a slight loosening of the grip on Kurogane’s hand as Fai slumped closer to the wall, his breathing slight and ragged. “I need to… I need to rest.” Another sigh, deeper and slower, and the lilt of Fai’s voice fading to a husky rasp. “I don’t. I don’t really want to let go.”

Even if Kurogane could not see the hand that held his own – could not see anything at all, his vision thoroughly dazzled by the shadows of Fai’s magic and his cell plunged into pitch darkness once more – he could feel the trembling in Fai’s fingers where they twined with his own without care for the gore and grit smeared between them, across the once-torn palm of Kurogane’s hand; now healed, with the pain of it only a memory, and the relief something that lingered long after.

“Stay, then,” said Kurogane, the words rough where they tripped from his tongue. “For a little while.” The wall was cool and damp even through the weave of his tattered shirt, but Kurogane did not feel it – not with that hand held warm and close to his own. His own eyes felt heavy. “Then you can rest.”

Kurogane needed to move, to find the heavy chunk of brick broken free of the wall and lost somewhere to the corners of his cell; he needed to find the split pieces of what had been his spoon and assess their use as a possible weapon. He needed to run his fingers over the skin of his palm, to test the wound that Fai had healed and find some way to mop away the blood that had spilled all down his arm and smeared across stone. But it was some time still until the eleventh hour came by again, and he was tired – almost as tired as the man whose hand he held. For now, though, they could both rest. Just for a little while.

* * *

The last dregs of clean water trickled through Kurogane’s fingers, a slow cool drip that spiralled down his wrist and fell in heavy droplets to the stone below. A few days ago, he would have called it a waste – would have saved every last drop to slake the thirst that never really left him – but the blood that itched on his skin in caked lines and splatters needed to be cleaned away, if only so he could feel the extent of the damage the sharp edge of metal had torn into his skin. Or where the damage had _been_ , at least.

“It’s completely gone.” The skin beneath Kurogane’s fingertips was as whole as it had been before – more so even, seeing as the rough and scabbing scrape across his palm from days ago had disappeared, and even the rawness of his grazed knuckles where the rough edges of stone had torn skin bloody were healed. The small cuts and nicks that littered Kurogane’s hands from fingertip to wrist had faded cleanly, as though they never had been; even the old, old scars from a life dedicated to the sword had eased into smoother skin.

“Yes.” Fai’s voice was still soft, still tired, but there was more life in him now that they’d both slept some, and his footsteps were steady and slow as he crossed the floor. “Pass me your cup.” He sounded unimpressed with the results of his magic, and maybe he was – he’d been used for it cruelly, after all. Still. It wasn’t something Kurogane would forget, not now and not in the years to come.

“Kurogane?”

“Hm?” He blinked, jolted from his thoughts. “What?”

“Your cup – I can get more water for you, but I need your cup first.” The smile in Fai’s voice was a tentative thing, nothing at all like the teasing edge Kurogane had heard him use to deflect painful questions.

Kurogane tipped the cup up, the last few drops gentle where they fell coolly on his skin. “Here.”

The brush of fingertips against his own was still startling, though Fai’s fingers were cold now where before they had been warm: no glow of magic in his touch, no heat that rippled over Kurogane’s skin where Fai’s thumb pressed against him to take his cup from his hand. Kurogane still remembered how it had felt, though, and the shiver that raced up his arm wasn’t only from the chill of the stone around them. “It doesn’t taste the best,” said Fai, as if in apology, his hand slipping away and his voice fading a little as he turned towards a distant corner of his cell – the corner where a thin trickle seeped through damp and mossy stone, dripping water condensed from the chill of the air and the river below.

Kurogane snorted. “It’s more water than I’ve got. I’d still drink it if it tasted like mud.”

The dull spatter of drops hitting clay echoed a little. “It shouldn’t be too long until they bring our meal for the day,” said Fai quietly. “I don’t think we slept over late.”

“Your guess is better than mine.” It felt like days had passed since Kurogane had stumbled away from the wall, his steps unsteady and the echo of Fai’s magic glowing warm in his palm, a second heartbeat that stayed with him long after he laid down upon his pallet and fell into an exhausted sleep. “I still have no damn clue how you can tell the time down here.”

Fai’s laughter was rasping and soft. “The explanation is lengthy and complicated, and relates to how long I’ve been in this place. If I just said it was magic, would you believe me?”

“Probably not,” Kurogane grunted. The distant hollow tone of water trickling into his cup changed a little as it approached fullness. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. All that matters is that we get fed. We’ll need our strength to get out–”

A violent crash of metal slamming against stone cut across Kurogane’s words, drowning them out with a screeching clang, and the wet sound of clay shards shattering followed quickly after.

“ _Ah_ – the cup!” cried Fai, but Kurogane was already moving for the door. The crash had been from the gates at the end of the hall being thrown open, he was sure of it – and if the gates were open that meant the guards were coming and more time had passed then they had thought. If Fai had dropped the damn cup and it was broken, what of it – there were more things Kurogane had to worry about than thirst. Like the heavy tread of boots stomping across stone with urgent speed, for instance, and the tangled knot of rage that sound stoked to life in his chest.

“Stay quiet,” Kurogane hissed, and Fai fell silent with a soft intake of breath. A low stoop dragged his fingers across the grit of the floor, Kurogane’s hand closing about the chunk of brick he’d pried free from the wall. He’d had to crawl to find it again when first he woke, spent long moments mapping by feel the corner of the cell where he thought it most like to have landed. When Kurogane had finally brushed against it and touched the jagged edges where stone had split, chipped and cracked and sharp beneath his fingertips, his hands had trembled with violent satisfaction. Just as they did now.

Because only a single set of footsteps had come running down the hall. No cart, no company, just the one guard on his own, and here Kurogane’s chance for revenge had come at last.

The low rumble of the guard muttering to himself grew louder as he drew nearer, more words at once than Kurogane could readily understand; but what the guard was _saying_ didn’t matter, only that the stream of mumbled curses meant distraction that Kurogane could take advantage of. _Be calm. Be still_. _You have a weapon._ _You have the time. When the moment comes, strike – until then, you wait._

Leather boots squeaked carelessly over the rough cobblestones as the guard came to a grunting stop. “Damn it all!” Keys jangled in a gauntleted hand, a clattering rattle that dropped onto stone. “That _bastard!_ That twisted, slimy weasel. The _frontlines_. The fucking frontlines!” Kurogane drew a slow and steadying breath, unheard over the noise of the guard’s ranting. _He’s right outside._ Each step was silent and sure as he moved carefully across the cell floor and towards its heavy door, ears ringing from the strain of listening hard for the smallest of sounds that might give his movement away.

“Get the _prisoner_ ,” spat the guard, and this time the jangle of keys was furious, the hand that held them shaking with clumsy temper. “He’s worth a _fortune_ , so if you want your share you’ll bring him up from the cells - _hah!_ ”

Kurogane’s back met the wall beside the cell door as he turned, bracing his shoulders against the damp chill of stone as he took his place. In one raised hand he gripped the brick tightly, curling his fingers around its chipped edges and feeling the dull pressure against his palm as he squeezed; the other hand Kurogane lifted as a shield, forearm braced ready and waiting to ward off the first blow should the guard counter his attack.

“Lazy prick, making me do it on my own - all that bastard thinks about is coin. _Feh!_ All the gold in the world’s no good when you’re too busy fighting for your damn life to spend it.”

A final jangle of the keys and another step forward, the guard’s muttering sounding oddly distant even as he made for the lock. It wasn’t until Kurogane heard the first clanking grind of the key scraping home that he realised _why_ – and his eyes, closed against the coming glare of the door opening, snapped open in sudden sick dread.

 _Fai_.

“Hey! Priest!” A heavy fist pounded against iron, the echo jolting across the dungeon and the jeering voice of the guard rising like smoke. “Time to get that skinny arse up – you’re coming with me!”

The door to Fai’s cell slammed open with a clanking groan that sank into Kurogane’s gut like a blow, a fist that grabbed his innards and twisted them in its wrenching grip. “Fai!” The name roared out of him, all caution gone to ashes as Kurogane lunged for the wall, slamming his fists against it; the desperation in each blow enough to send a tremor through the stone. “ _Fai!_ Don’t let him take you! You have to fight!”

“What the sweet _hell_ – hey!”

The light from the guard’s torch spilled through the hole in the wall, burning bright and flaring spots across Kurogane’s vision as he reached for the gap, his fingers already clawing at the cracked stone as though to pry it apart with his bare hands. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t _see_ , furious tears pricking at his eyes and pouring down his face as he winced against the glare, and in Fai’s cell the ragged breaths and grunting gasps of a struggle surged forth on the tail of a strained and shuddering yell.

“ _Fight!_ ” The scream tore out of Kurogane’s throat, choked and harsh. A bolt of pain shot up his arm, bursting in his elbow as he hammered his fist into the wall, stone chips crunching free beneath each blow as it fell. “Fai!”

A pained yelp, and the meaty thump of a body slamming into a wall. The light flickered as the torch was dropped with a curse, flames hissing and spluttering against the dampness of the floor. The grating scrape of metal and leather against stone. A heaving grunt, and another thump – shadows blurring across the light and Kurogane’s heart drumming frantic against his ribs at the sound of a furious shout. The crack and scatter of rock and grit crunching under boots, and the heavy slam of two bodies hitting the ground, the clatter of armour grinding, _grinding_ against itself as two men struggled.

A harsh and breathless cry, creaking and desperate, and the tortured scrape of stone against stone. A scream, ferocious in its fury, and the dull wet crack of rock against bone, liquid splatter bursting in its splintering wake as it fell again and again in horrific cadence. “ _Fai!_ ” Blood filled Kurogane’s mouth, his lip splitting beneath the force of his breathless shout, and all the rage in his chest was swallowed by fear to leave him hollow in its heaving wake. “FAI–!!”

Silence.

The ringing in Kurogane’s ears chased spots across his vision, winking against the dimming flickers of the torchlight, and the bile that flooded his mouth stung his nose, his eyes where it surged up his throat. The smack of brick against skull had been unmistakable, the panting wrath of the victor loud in the sudden, sick quiet, and Kurogane knew only one man had survived the fight that had just reached its brutal conclusion. He heard footsteps, slick and wobbling where they staggered through a slimy puddle of _something_ – blood, brains, the cracked-out innards of the defeated spilt wet across the dungeon floor – and made for the door, and if Kurogane’s stomach heaved at the thought of the priest – of a _good man_ meeting his end so ignobly it was only fitting.

 _If he killed you_ , gasped a voice, and Kurogane was stunned to realise it was his own, _if he killed you, Fai, I’ll destroy him, I’ll –_

Keys jangled clumsily, the sound crass and discordant against the shocked stillness that had fallen. Harsh breaths, panting for air, and Kurogane’s own breath quickened in an echo of the sound. The slow grind of metal against metal as latches squealed clear of their locks, and Kurogane backed away from the wall, from the spear of light that pierced the darkness and crouched low, so that he might catch with shaky fingertips the _other_ half of the brick used so violently and take it in a firm, steady grip. Shaky hands skittered across the heavy iron handle of the door in pursuit of a hold, and Kurogane surged forward, ready to strike as metal screeched against stone, brightness slicing into the dark as the door groaned open and a shadow took shape in the doorframe –

“ _Kurogane_?”

A chunk of stone fell from suddenly trembling fingers, clattering unheeded to the ground below.

“I killed the guard,” said the shadow – said _Fai_ – standing thin and tall and shaking against the burning of the light. His shape wavered against the tears blurring Kurogane’s vision, and his face, what Kurogane could see of it through teary eyes – his face, his eyes were _wild_ , drowning dark in the shadows cast by torchlight. “Stove his head in with the brick,” Fai whispered in a rasp, and even had Kurogane not heard it, Kurogane would still believe it: by the blood painted in an arc across the fine bones of those thin features, by the violent shaking of the hand that held the keys – and by the chunk of stone held loose in slick and gory fingers, stained glistening dark at its chipped corner and dripping still to the filthy floor below. “I – I _killed_ –”

“You did what you had to,” said Kurogane, the words grating in his throat. In the corner of one eye, dark and wet and shimmering in the dying torchlight, the shock of what Fai had done spilled over at last. Wet salt trickled down the starved hollow of one cheek, crossed the black-red splatter that had sprayed across that face and dripped into the greasy, knotted tangle of hair and beard.

“You did what you had to,” Kurogane repeated, without thinking, and stepped forward close enough that he could reach out. His fingers skipped over Fai’s cheekbone, thumb dragging across the track of where that tear had fallen, the hesitant touch smearing wetly through the splash of blood to leave a streak of pale skin in its wake.

“We should go,” said Fai, trembling, eyes drooping almost shut. He swayed on the spot as he dropped the keys, and they jangled across the flagstones dully to skitter to a halt at Kurogane’s feet. “The other guard – he’ll come down to look for this one. And then more will be coming after that – we can’t fight them all off.” His fingers tightened their grip on the brick.

“Here,” said Kurogane, and his hands fell to bony shoulders, squeezing them through the thin and filthy shirt that clung to Fai’s back. If Fai was tall, Kurogane was still taller, and starvation had not eaten away as much of the meat on his bones; it was easy to steer Fai’s thin figure back to the wall and lean him against it, press those trembling shoulders back against stone for stability. “I’ll lock the cells – it’ll give us longer before they figure out what’s wrong if they come down here.” The other guards would come, that was certain; the noise of the fight had been _tremendous_ , not to mention Kurogane’s own yelling, and sooner or later someone would trek down the long hallway to investigate.

The keyring jittered in his grip when Kurogane scooped it up, heavy copper keys rattling against one another as he figured out which key was which and locked both their cells in a screeching clank of metal on metal – and paid no heed to the bloodied heap of a man that lay sprawled in the shadow of Fai’s, spluttering torchlight casting strange shapes across the pools of the guard’s own blood. A look up the hall showed more torches lining the walls before the distant gate at its end, and his eyes were still watering at the light, but every cell but for the two Kurogane had just locked stood with doors open and darkness beyond them.

“The river,” gasped Fai, and he was shaking. “We have to–”

“Come on,” said Kurogane grimly. He took Fai’s hand as Fai looked up at him through the tangle of his hair – and wide eyes were startlingly _blue_. “We’re in this together.”

A strange look passed over thin features, painful in its twisting, and Fai took a shuddering breath; but then his jaw tensed beneath the lines of his ragged beard, and the kind of determination that had driven him to kill another in defence of his own life and Kurogane’s both – because Kurogane had no illusions; if the guard had succeeded in dragging Fai from his cell, most likely Kurogane himself would have stayed locked up and left to starve in the darkness – hardened his eyes into flint.

“Alright,” said Fai. His fingers gripped tight to Kurogane’s, and the sticky grit of gore smeared between them. He dropped his brick at last, let it clatter and crack to the stone below. “Alright. I trust you.” The words didn’t need to be said, not really, but they were heady all the same, a responsibility Kurogane would gladly shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

They didn’t run, Fai’s legs wavering still with shock, but the grip Kurogane had on Fai’s hand urged them both on regardless, staggering together towards the heavy iron door at the end of the hall beyond Fai’s cell. Dull metal was pocked with rust and massive rivets anchoring it together, wind whistling through the gaps between the door and the stone that surrounded it, and the only iron key Kurogane could see on the keyring had to belong to the huge padlock arming its thick bolts. “Beyond here the river goes underground,” Fai was saying, his voice cracked and thin. “It leads through the caves that honeycomb the mountains, travels through the mountains and comes out at the end of the valley – close to the forest where Nihon’s forces are picketed.” He took a shuddering breath. “If we can survive the fall – if we can make it through the rapids – then we should be able to make it to safety.”

It wouldn’t be easy, and there was no telling if they would not be dashed to pieces or simply drown besides. But it was better than the death waiting for them both at the hands of the guards. “I need to,” Kurogane muttered, and let go of Fai’s hand clumsily. “For the lock,” he said, and swallowed, and the look on Fai’s face said he understood why it had been hard to let go in the first place.

At the end of the hallway, there was a shout; the sound of metal scraping raised the hair on the back of Kurogane’s neck with an awful shudder. “The guards!” Fai’s voice was sharp, terror flashing in those blue eyes.

Kurogane jammed the key in the lock, and wrenched it about viciously; the padlock burst open with a screech, tumbling to the ground with a heavy crash of metal on stone. “Help me,” he gritted, hands falling to the bolts – and thin, bloody fingers worked alongside his own, fear lending them both strength as they yanked each one free.

“They’re closer,” panted Fai, and on the tail of his gasp rang a shout in furious Ceresian, one Kurogane didn’t need to understand to dread. The heavy tread of footsteps rang down the hallway behind them, echoes warping and reverberating with the shouts and screams of the guards.

“Pull together,” he grunted, and both their hands closed over the solid handle, the muscles in Kurogane’s arms screaming as together they wrenched it back, staggering on stone as the door swung open with a groan of tortured metal. The howling gale surging up from the frothing river screamed over them immediately, wet with spray and the cold taste of ice-melt from distant snows; wind scuffed harshly across Kurogane’s face, stinging his eyes and prickling his skin with spray as the handle slipped from his grip, jerked from Fai’s hands as the heavy iron planks of the door slammed into the wall beyond with an echoing bang that shuddered through stone.

Beyond the doorway, there was only the edge of darkness – some great and cavernous roof spiraling stonily above them, the underside of a mountain crouched in abyssal chasms of rock carved by the work of ages. The torchlight from the hallway could not touch it, its depths unplumbed by such weak light and filled with shadow. Below, a steep and plunging drop – and the river that thrashed and foamed at its end, gnashing through the fangs of the stony outcrops jutting from the water in a churning maw of rapids.

“We jump together.” Fear and rage knotted together in Kurogane’s chest, twisting into something like courage.

“We live or die together,” said Fai softly, and when trembling fingers reached for Kurogane’s hand, Kurogane’s own closed about them with no hesitation, his heartbeat pounding in his chest as he snatched Fai closer, enough so that he could wrap his arms around that skinny, shaking frame – and Fai’s arms slammed around his back, the crush of his hold cracking and tight about Kurogane’s ribs and his breathing harsh and echoing. Blood pulsed in Kurogane’s temples, in his hands, aching with the adrenaline that screamed heat through the shuddering cage of his ribs, roaring in the drag of his breath as he opened his mouth to shout.

_“Now!”_

As one they leapt for the edge, clinging to each other in a moment of terrible suspension as their feet left stone and the fall yawned open beneath them – but the rush of air that howled around them in a plummeting tempest was cold and clean and wet with the spray of the river, everything the darkness of the dungeon had not been, and the clutch of Fai’s arms as they twisted about Kurogane’s back was locking and sure. In the seconds before they hit the water – in that fraction of time before what could be their last possible moment – a shout burst from Kurogane’s chest, furious with victory. They might not yet survive the escape, but they had _made it_ : they were free.

_We will not die here – we will live!_

As one, they fell: knifing into the rapids below, and the foaming crash of the river stole breath as it surged over them in a torrential wave. Water roared over the top of Kurogane’s head, but his arms were certain and strong where they held Fai to him, and the boiling current pulled them both together into the plunging darkness that washed through the heart of the mountain.

**Author's Note:**

> My beta suggested I consider the ending something of a 'Butch and Sundance' scenario, since its ambiguity was not something I really expected to write, and I honestly worried about it quite a bit while writing it.
> 
> If you would like to vote for my fic in the 2016 KuroFai Olympics, please head on over to the KuroFai Community on dreamwidth; the official voting post is [here.](https://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/92547.html)


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